Flip through the latest issue of Gulf Weekly.
Award-winning American writer and musician James McBride has published his latest book delving into the secrets sheltered within a small town.
The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store was published yesterday and is already attracting favourable reviews online.
The story, set in 1972, centres on workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, where the foundations for a new development were being dug.
The last thing they expected to find was a skeleton at the bottom of a well. Who the skeleton was and how it got there are two of the long-held secrets kept by the residents of Chicken Hill, the dilapidated neighbourhood where two distinct communities live side by side and shared ambitions and sorrows.
Chicken Hill is also where the two main characters, Moshe and Chona Ludlow, live. Moshe integrated his theater and Chona ran the Heaven and Earth Grocery Store.
As these characters’ stories overlap and deepen, it becomes clear how much the people who live on the margins of white, Christian America struggle and what they must do to survive.
The 65-year-old author is well known for his 1995 memoir, the bestselling book The Colour of Water, which describes his life growing up in a large, poor American-African family led by his white Jewish mother.
